


Pilgrimage

by ponderinfrustration



Series: Aftermath [4]
Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux
Genre: F/M, Father-Son Relationship, Friendship, Grave
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 03:33:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16590062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ponderinfrustration/pseuds/ponderinfrustration
Summary: In the Spring of 1882, Raoul vowed to protect Erik and Christine's son. In November 1918, the war ends, and he goes down beneath the Opera House to visit a lonely grave.





	Pilgrimage

Thirty-six years, seven months, and twenty days ago he held a bundle wrapped in a blanket in his arms, and tucked inside that blanket was a tiny baby boy, the most precious one in the world. Only a handful of hours old, fingers half-curled and eyelids fluttering gently in sleep. With infinite gentleness, he tucked that little hand deeper into the folds of the blanket, and, in a moment of impulse, brushed his lips against that soft forehead, so much as to say, _you are mine now, and I will protect you always_ , though his only claim to the little boy was an everlasting love for his mother, and a promise made to his dead father.

The faintest hint of incense on the air made him lift his head from studying a perfect snub nose, and for a moment he was certain of a pair of glowing golden eyes by the window, bright in the shadows of the room.

He blinked, the moment lost, the eyes vanished, the cloying heaviness of incense lingering in the back of his throat the only whisper that there had been anything at all.

And Raoul De Chagny, late of the Navy, heir to an estate, newly made a godfather, knew the bond was sealed.

He smiled back down at the precious child in his arms, and blinked the tears away.

 

Thirty-six years, three months, and one day ago (exactly), he entered the opera house through the secret entrance in an alleyway, avoiding the crowds and bustle, avoiding the dressing room with its mirror that he slipped through, once, a year ago, and wound his way through dark tunnels, down dark steps, to emerge on the bank of a lake. A little boat could bring him to the other side, to the house that had lain empty for nine months, but it was not the house he came to see, not that evening. His feet carried him without thought along an invisible path, to a grave marked only with a peculiar-shaped stone. The disturbance of the silt-clay, one year old, only known to him because he knew to look for it, because he was the one who filled it in, who found that stone and lay it as a marker, woefully inadequate. He spent weeks thinking of words, weeks biding his time, figuring out what to say in this moment, and when the moment came the words all dried to dust his throat, none of them right, the final traces of ancient grudges long-since burned to ashes.

“You should be the one with them,” he breathed instead, the water still, the air heavy with decay, mildew and damp and moss on stones, the incense a memory. “But I am doing my best to love them enough for the both of us.”

And if a tear slipped own his cheek, there was no one but the dead to know of it.

 

He comes down when Konstin starts to babble. Comes down when Konstin starts to walk. Comes down the first time Konstin fingers out a piece on the piano. Comes down when Konstin makes his first childish composition. Comes down when, finally, Konstin goes off to the Conservatoire. Comes down when he leaves to travel to Persia and every time there is a letter from him, and comes down again when he comes home, still Konstin but somehow changed, somehow quieter, and he comes down when Konstin goes off to Saint-Cyr and when he graduates a lieutenant, and down here is the only place he can rage when the war breaks out because he might have only been a little boy at the time but he remembers long ago when Philippe went off to fight the Prussians and almost didn’t come back, and he will not have that happen to Konstin, he will not _stand_ for it.

(He came down when Christine agreed to court him, and again when she agreed to marry him, and again when their babies were born, Anja and Émile, both precious tiny bundles in his arms, separated by less than three years.)

He comes down all of these times and all of the times in between, for no reason at all, just to visit, until his feet could carry him here alone without any direction from his head, until he could walk with his eyes closed to find the place where Erik lies.

 

And here he is again, thirty-six years, three months, and one day after that first visit, when the best he could do to love Christine and Konstin enough for he and Erik both did not seem like half enough. How many times has he visited this secret grave, in all the weeks, all the months, all the years since? Countless, hundreds, maybe thousands of times. And never has he spoken more than a few words, never has he stayed more than a few minutes. It is not his place, not his right to be here, but the right of the precious boy of whom he has always spoken, who he cradled in his arms that first night when he saw the ghost by the window.

Not his right, but the draw is relentless, leading him down.

He has always followed it, always let it pull him on, and tonight, the city caught mixed in jubilation and relief, he stands at the side of a grave that has long-since blended into the ground around and withdraws a small bottle of cognac from his pocket.

Bones creaking, he settles onto the clay, coattails fanned around him, and uncorks the bottle.

He is hoarse with exhaustion, hoarse with lingering worry, hoarse with two weeks of talking through the late hours of the night, of promising and pleading and praying and soothing and wishing his voice was enough to take the pain away, was enough to ease the fear, was enough to banish fever dreams and throw a lifeline to cling to. Two weeks of pure fear, distilled to suffocating, after four years of terror.

(Four years, over now.)

He sips the cognac, and steels himself.

“He’s going to live,” he whispers, “Konstin, but I’m sure you know that already. We thought we were going to lose him last night.” He does not say _, he had stopped saying anything at all, had stopped crying out, had stopped opening his eyes, had stopped moving his fingers, had stopped everything except gasping and his skin was burning up and there was blood rattling in his throat and the doctor didn’t say anything but when he sent for the priest he didn’t have to, and then he stopped breathing, just stopped, and I thought I would faint when the doctor pushed us away and said he still had a pulse if he could only get him to start breathing again_. He remembers it all, remembers holding Christine to him and saying every prayer he knew even as he held her and promised that their son would be all right (because thirty-six years of loving a child will make him your son even after he’s long become a man), that Konstin would be all right, even though he didn’t believe it, even though it all weighed like lies on his tongue, each heartbeat stretching on endless, ears keenly aware of the ticking of the clock on the mantle. But the lies were borne out, the doctor’s efforts rewarded, the clock ceased to matter, when Konstin choked on the air and brought up the blood clogging his lungs and gasped in hitching breaths.

Raoul clears his throat and sips the cognac again, his voice stronger. “His fever broke around dawn, and his lungs are clearer, but he still hasn’t woken. The doctor thinks it might take a day or two, after—after it all.”

Tears come, fresh tears though he thought he had cried them all already in two weeks of nursing influenza and pneumonia, but he swallows and lets them roll.

If someone had told him back then, that he would one day sit weeping at Erik’s grave over the son they both shared, if someone told him that at any moment before he first held Konstin in his arms, he would have laughed at them and told them not to be ridiculous. He would look after the boy for Christine’s sake, because he had promised to take care of her, and that would be all. Nothing more and nothing less.

But the first time those tiny fingers curled around his he was helpless.

And last night was the third time he was certain he would lose him. The first when he was ill as a little boy, the second when he was so badly wounded last year. And it is difficult to reconcile that with what has happened, with the fact that, if God is good, is fair and right and preserves him from a relapse, that Konstin will live. Will live and go on and make beautiful music and love Antoine (because Raoul has always known what lies between those two, has always suspected it, but in the dark hours of the night as the candlelight played over Konstin’s face and his eyes flickered fever-bright, and he asked for Antoine in a voice slurred and aching with so much feeling, so much desperation, in those dark hours every question Raoul might ever have asked lost their place in his mouth, and he could think of nothing more fitting than for his nephew and his son who isn’t really his son to have each other), in a world that is now, finally, after four years, free of war.

Anytime he tantalized himself with the thought of the war ending, he was sure it would feel like magic, would feel like release, would feel like stepping crying into the rain and turning his face to the heavens and being cleansed.

Would feel like being able to breathe again.

He never imagined it would only be the second-best piece of news he would get that day.

But the war is over. And Konstin will live. And it is terribly, horribly selfish of him but in this moment it is that latter fact that fills his heart with lightness, that makes him tilt his head back and smile even with the tears on his cheeks and the aching in his bones. Konstin will live, and the war is over, and that is the precedence right now with which he can see things.

He swallows, and pours the cognac over the grave, a silent toast.

“It was you who saved him,” he whispers, though Erik cannot hear, but maybe if there was ever a chance that the dead could hear him it is tonight, after everything. “You saved him. I know you did. I could feel you there last night.” Even with Christine in his arms and prayers and promises on his lips and the doctor working over Konstin’s still and silent form trying to persuade him to breathe, he caught the faintest hint of incense on the air, through the liniment and the poultices and the carbolic acid and the blood. The faintest heaviness of incense, and he thought it was Death, come to claim another soul, but it was only Erik to keep his son alive and he should have known that. “Thank you.”

And it is selfish of him, again, but he is a selfish man when it comes to his family and it is only his second most selfish thought of the day, but he hopes, with every fibre of his heart, that even though he has already had a lifetime with Konstin, he hopes that Erik will have to wait another lifetime to meet him, will have to wait fifty more years to get to know his son.

And, privately, he suspects Erik would agree with him.


End file.
